I've hung my overcoat at the crossroads of media technology and social change for the last 20 years as a journalist, author, and consultant. That includes a book - CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World (Wiley) which chronicles the rise of online social activism - and bylines at The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, techPresident.com, Social Edge, Industry Standard, Inside, Worth and Contribute magazines, among many other publications. I co-founded three companies, including the pioneering '90s protoblog @NY and CauseWired, my consulting firm currently advising clients on the social commons. In my spare time, I'm an adjunct instructor of social media and philanthropy at New York University.

Crowdsourcing Action: Connecticut Massacre Spurs Largest White House Petition - But Is It a Movement?

American flag flies at half-staff following a mass shooting at nearby Sandy Hook School on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The numbing mass murder of 20 young schoolchildren and six public educators in a Connecticut school on Friday has led to an outpouring of support for tighter gun laws and the largest-ever petition on the White House’s We The People citizen action website. But is the visceral sadness and national grief at the rampage in Newtown expressed across the social graph from Facebook to Twitter to the White House site just a paroxysm of vast and understandable societal emotion, or the makings of a mass movement that may impact policy?

The White House site is an interesting experiment in crowdsourcing citizen involvement, a social enterprise created by the Obama Administration that is designed – in theory – to allow people to organize themselves to get important issues on the national agenda. After Friday’s carnage, Adam S. created a petition asking the White House to “Set a date and time to have a conversation about gun policy in the United States.” It quickly garnered several thousand petitions, but is still several thousand signatures short of the 25,000 name threshold that the Obama Administration requires to publicly address a topic.

Later in the day, another We The People user David G. posted a petition with much tougher wording, and a more precise call to action: “Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress.” That petition quickly grew to the largest ever, moving past the threshold number and now boasting more than 122,000 signatures. It was shared widely, particularly on Facebook, where you could see quickly in your timeline which friends had signed it. And the White House requires both real names and working emails, complete with verification links before any vote is counted. It’s also a rather dry procedure – you can say what you’d like in promoting others to sign the petition, but once you’re on the White House site, it’s a straightforward signing with no comment – and no room for emotion. That leaves the anger and grief on the social networks and outside websites, and not on the White House site. There are at least six petitions on the site asking for greater gun safety in the United States; the previous leader in signatures was a petition from a Texan seeking the right for his state to secede after President Obama’s reelection.

At Change.org, a social change platform that specializes in public petition drives, there are many new petitions related to the Connecticut shootings. I counted at least 50. But none had received more than 2,000 votes and their messages – the calls to action – were decidedly mixed. One called on President Obama to “Support stricter gun laws and re-institute the assault weapons ban.” Another called on the Newtown School District to “Level and Rebuild Sandy Hook Elementary School.” And a third called on Congress to “Make it almost impossible to obtain handguns and assault rifles in the U.S.” There was many voices at work, and their calls were emotional, especially in recalling the lives of the murdered schoolchildren and their teachers. Yet because there were so many petitions started by many different users, there was no central movement at work.

The scene was the same on Facebook and Twitter. The shootings continue to dominate the timeline, yet there is a mix of emotions and many different calls for action – from tougher gun laws that buck the trend of the last couple of decades, to anger at the National Rifle Association for its support for legal automatic weapon sales, to calls for better access to psychiatric treatment in order to prevent other mass killings. Outside of the White House petition and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s direct call for a national political movement (which he would presumably lead and fund), there were millions of bytes spilled in sadness, and outrage, and anger – but fewer in cohesive action.

In part, it’s too soon. But from the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other people in Arizona almost two years ago to now, the headlines have never grown cold in chronicling mass shootings involving tremendous firepower. So this is nothing new – it’s just larger and involves the heinous deaths of 20 young children. And the outpouring of reaction to this rampage seems greater somehow. But it still lacks that cohesive movement that characterizes other potent social causes like gay rights and immigration reform.

“We genuinely believe that this one is different,” Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told The New York Times on Saturday. “It’s different because no decent human being can look at a tragedy like this and not be outraged by the fact that it can happen in our nation.”

And that is certainly true. What remains to be seen is whether a big White House petition or the anger on the vast social networks or Mayor Bloomberg’s call can activate the kind of social enterprise that is usually required for national political change. But perhaps there was one sign in the post popular hashtag on Twitter used to coalesce action on Twitter in the hours and days after Sandy Hook. It was #TodayIsTheDay.

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